FWD.us

Video news startup NowThis is partnering with FWD.us, the immigration lobbying group backed by Mark Zuckerberg and other tech executives, to tackle one of the biggest issues in this year’s election cycle.
Last night at South by Southwest, the two organizations announced a partnership where NowThis is creating a video series focused on immigration. NowThis President Athan Stephanopoulos… Read More

Even as immigration advocates push for increases to the H-1B visa quotas, calls for reform to the existing system are growing louder — from legislators and immigration advocacy groups alike.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senator Dick Durbin, a ranking Democrat, introduced a bill that would limit outsourcing of jobs by requiring companies to first attempt to hire U.S. citizens. Read More

Immigration reform, conventional wisdom goes, becomes less likely to pass the closer we come to the midterm election cycle. Despite that, and recent reticence of House Republicans to put the issue on the agenda at all, the Mark Zuckerberg-backed FWD.us lobbying group is spending $250,000 to air new advertisements on cable.
Why? According to the group, to “prod” the lower chamber… Read More

Early Facebook investor and noted Silicon Valley libertarian Peter Thiel thinks that too many Americans have mistakenly blamed technology for rising inequality. “Technology is an easy scapegoat,” he argued, in a big-think discussion put on by political lobby, FWD.us. Read More

With Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates as founders, you’d think FWD.us would focus on building tech tools to push for immigration reform. Yet it’s mostly used money to buy campaign ads for supportive Congress members and run grassroots campaigns. But now it’s hired Darius Contractor as CTO; he’ll be working with volunteer engineers and running hackathons to code the way… Read More

Is FWD.us really making a difference? Today it released its first quantified stats on its contribution to immigration reform, announcing that it drove 33,500 calls to Congress this summer and a total of 125,000 actions including social media shares. That’s not a stellar call count, but it represents solid work by the political action group founded and funded by tech leaders like Mark… Read More

“If it’s just about tech wanting to hire more people, not as impressive” commented one of Mark Zuckerberg’s 18 million Facebook followers. “It’s definitely not just about tech immigration” Zuckerberg shot back in the comments for a video he’d posted from his political advocacy group FWD.us. Replying to average joes and reporters alike… Read More

Mark Zuckerberg and Joe Green’s controversial political advocacy group FWD.us started getting the public involved today with its new Speak Up campaign that calls you and connects you to your senator to show your support for immigration reform. Until now, the only way people could participate in FWD.us was by signing up to volunteer later or sharing the group’s messages. Read More

Amidst widespread criticism, Mark Zuckerberg’s political advocacy group FWD.us gained some momentum today as it announced Steven Chen and Barry Diller have signed on as financial backers. Chen was a co-founder of YouTube, and Diller is the chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp which owns About, Match, Newsweek and Vimeo. Diller and Chen, an immigrant himself, will fund campaigns for… Read More

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The head of Mark Zuckerberg’s enigmatic political lobby took the stage of TechCrunch’s Disrupt New York conference. “It’s incumbent on us to make the knowledge economy as inclusive as possible,” said FWD.us head Joe Green.
FWD.us joins a crowded landscape of politically aggressive trade associations pressing Silicon Valley’s agenda on Capitol Hill. Since… Read More

Leaders from Facebook, Google, and other tech giants today announced they’re banding together to form a political advocacy group called FWD.us, designed to promote policies that will keep the American workforce competitive. The bipartisan group’s first priority is pushing for comprehensive immigration reform, but it will also support education reform and scientific research. Read More